El Niño

The negative phase of the ENSO climate phenomenon, whose main manifestation is an anomalous warming of the surface waters of the eastern equatorial Pacific, which occurs cyclically, though erratically, over periods ranging from 3 to 8 years. The onset of El Niño alters both meteorological and oceanic patterns on both sides of the Pacific basin, with significant anomalies in ocean and atmospheric currents. Its signal is also detected in other, more distant land areas, with several well-established teleconnections. El Niño is thus expressed, in Spanish, in the international meteorological vocabulary. It refers to the Christ Child (Niño Jesús or Niño Dios) - the main figure of Christian Christmas -, since the old fishermen of the port of Paita, in northern Peru, began to call the marine current coming from the Gulf of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, this way, as it broke in toward the end of the year - around Christmas - and warmed the sea water, which drastically reduced catches. They were then forced to stay home, unable to fish for several months. In addition, throughout that time, it rained very heavily. The return to normality did not come until upwellings of cold, nutrient-rich water began to occur, giving rise to the appearance of large schools of fish off the Peruvian coast.